It should be aggravating

But instead it gives me a goddam*ed belly laugh!

Notice how the sheep in the video bleat at every inflection of the pastor's voice.

It should be aggravating to see government resources squandered on stupid religious superstition. Larry Langford, mayor of Birmingham, is currently undertaking a "sackcloth and ashes" campaign to counter the city's violence and crime. I'm sure it will work very well -- much better than, say, hiring police officers or spending on after-school programs for youth. I'd love to see a non-punitive lawsuit come out of this; a judge scolding the mayor and setting the record straight on our Constitution would be very welcome. Idiots wasting time and resources on magic with tax dollars pisses me off mightily. Did the 2,000 sack cloths magically appear? Do it on your day off, mayor.

The city logo of Birmingham is apparently affixed to a shiny folder holding the proclamation for the special sackcloths...

To many Christians, sackcloth and ashes symbolize humility and repentance, but the mayor’s decree came dressed with the usual accoutrements - printed on fine, invitation-stock paper and wrapped in a bright silver folder, adorned by the magic hat logo Langford commissioned for the city last year.

Here is that logo:

More magic than ever!

bwahahahahahaha

You just can't make this stuff up! (H/T: PZ & TCR)

**PS: On a related note, the National Day of Prayer is 5/1 -- it should be renamed the National Obnoxious Fundamentalist Christians use Government to Push Their Agenda Day.**

The cumulative case for Obama

[cross-posted to my.barackobama.com blog]

I've written quite a few things on Obama since deciding to support him last January, before many people even knew who he was. Given that roughly 65% of television news airtime is devoted to campaign strategy rather than substance, Obama is starting to be painted more and more negatively by news outlets. This will be the last, or one of the last, arguments I try to present that he should be the next POTUS. It resides on a few of HRC's talking points:

1. her experience
2. her having already been "vetted"
3. his inelectability

1) Experience

Don't let her spin fool you. Obama has more legislative experience and accomplishment than HRC: he was in the IL State Senate from 1996 to 2004 and has been in the US Senate since then (total: 12 years) to HRC's 8. Being First Lady or a governor's wife should not be equivocated with being a legislator, co-President or being co-governor. Why is she ready to be president right now? Simply because she lived in the White House with one until 1/20/2001? And the "35 years of experience" is quite a stretch -- why should her last years of law school as a political activist count towards being President? Living with her husband in the Arkansas Governor's mansion means...what...again? HRC would mock Laura Bush if she claimed to be an inveterate politician, but that's exactly what she herself does.

Even if you grant her fallacious arguments for having more experience, I have made reference to experience as a factor in presidential history. Lincoln had two years in the House and went on to become widely regarded as America's greatest president. His predecessor Buchanan had a long résumé and is regarded as one of the worst.

2) HRC is "already vetted"

A few months ago, I brought attention to Frank Rich's column that showed how her claim is false in a major way: the murkiest areas of the Clinton's past probably lies in Bill's post-presidential activities and the donors to his foundation. Guess what? Just last week, the WSJ published "Clinton Foundation Secrets" -- an incisive cut through her spin to the facts -- a half-billion dollars of influence over a future president has already been bought by anonymous persons. Here's an excerpt:

Transparency is a popular word in this presidential election, with all three candidates finally having released their tax returns. Yet the public still hasn't seen the records of an institution with some of the biggest potential for special-interest mischief: The William J. Clinton Foundation.

Bill Clinton established that body in 1997 while still President. It has since raised half-a-billion dollars, which has been spent on Mr. Clinton's presidential library in Arkansas and global philanthropic initiatives. The mystery remains its donors, and whether these contributors might one day seek to call in their chits with a President Hillary Clinton.

That's no small matter given the former first couple's history. Yet Mr. Clinton says he won't violate the "privacy" of donors by disclosing their names, even if his wife wins the Oval Office. What is already in the public record should make that secrecy untenable, however:

Chicago bankruptcy lawyer William Brandt Jr. pledged $1 million for the Clinton library in May 1999, at the same time the Justice Department was investigating whether he'd lied about a Clinton fundraising event. The Clinton DOJ cleared him a few months later.

Also see Hendrik Hertzberg at The New Yorker:

Hillary has her own vulnerability in this general area, and it is larger than the fact, mentioned by Obama in his riposte to her, that her husband, on his last day in office, commuted the sentences of a couple of old Weather Underground jailbirds. (After a decade and a half in stir, they had been denied parole, apparently unfairly. Good for Bill.) What Obama did not mention was Hillary’s internship, back in the groovy summer of 1971, at the Oakland law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein. Treuhaft (Robert Treuhaft, husband of Jessica Mitford) had left the Communist Party thirteen years earlier, but Walker (Doris Walker) was still a member, and the firm was a pillar of the Bay Area Old Left. I assume that Obama didn’t mention this because doing so would have rightly pissed off a lot of Democrats, because he is running as a non-kneecapping uniter, and because there is no evidence that Clinton has or has ever had the slightest sympathy with Communism. (Of course, there is no such evidence with respect to Obama and Weather Underground-ism, either, but that didn’t stop Hillary from twisting that particular knife.)

My point is that Hillary Clinton has not, in fact, survived the worst that the Republican attack machine (and its pilotless drones online and on talk radio) can dish out. We will learn what the worst really means if she is nominated. The Commie law firm will be only the beginning. Many tempting targets—from Bill’s little-examined fund-raising and business activities during the past seven years to the prospect of his hanging around the White House in some as yet undefined role for another four or eight years to whatever leftovers from the Clinton “scandals” of the nineteen-nineties can be retrieved from the dumpster and reheated—remain to be machine-gunned. The whole Clinton marital soap opera, obviously off limits within the Democratic fold, will offer ample material for what Obama calls “distractions.” To take the most obvious example, the former President’s social life since leaving the White House will become, if not “fair game,” big game—and some of these right-wing dirtbags are already hiring bearers and trying on pith helmets for the safari. Is this a “there” where the Democratic Party really wants to go?

She's "been vetted"? Right. All of Obama's Rezko stuff (scroll down) has been raked over and over and it doesn't even come close to this level of potential fraud and influence peddling:

REALITY: Obama Has Done Nothing Wrong

Slate: There’s No Evidence That Obama Was "Fibbing" And "Obama Hasn’t Tried To Change His Story." Slate reported, "There's no evidence that the senator is fibbing or that the indicted fund-raiser asked anything in return for his neighborly behavior (though that might have been just a matter of time). Obama hasn't tried to change his story, even though Rezko is now talking to investigators." [Slate, 12/14/06]

Factcheck.org: "There’s No Indication Obama Did Anything Improper." Factcheck.org was asked "Was Obama’s real estate deal in Illinois really an issue?" Factcheck.org concluded, "Obama has a relationship with Rezko that dates back many years, but there’s no indication Obama did anything improper." [Factcheck.org, 12/28/07]

New York Times: "There Is Not Sign That Mr. Obama…Did Anything Improper." "There is no sign that Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, did anything improper." [New York Times, 6/14/07]

Washington Post: "There Have Been No Allegation That Obama…Broke The Law Or Committed Any Ethics Violations." The Washington Post reported, "There have been no allegations that Obama, whose political fortunes are soaring as he mulls a run for president, broke the law or committed any ethics violations." [Washington Post, 12/17/06]

Also, any supposed William Ayers connection is dubious and stupid, especially compared to her husband's pardon of those actually convicted as "terrorists", while Ayers was never convicted of a crime and is now a UIC professor:

REALITY: AYERS CONNECTION IS "PHONY," TENUOUS," "A STRETCH"

Chicago Sun Times: Obama's Connection To Ayers Is A "Phony Flap". The Chicago Sun-Times wrote in an editorial, "But Ayers, it is also true to say, has since followed in the footsteps of the great Chicago social worker Jane Addams, crusading for education and juvenile justice reform. His 1997 book, A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court, has been praised for exposing how Cook County's juvenile justice system all but eliminates a child's chance for redemption. Is Barack Obama consorting with a radical? Hardly. Ayers is nothing more than an aging lefty with a foolish past who is doing good. And while, yes, Obama is friendly with Ayers, it appears to be only in the way of two community activists whose circles overlap. Obama's middle name is Hussein. That doesn't make him an Islamic terrorist. He stopped wearing a flag pin. That doesn't make him unpatriotic. And he's friendly with UIC Professor William Ayers. That doesn't make him a bomb thrower. Time to move on to Phony Flap 6,537,204." [Chicago Sun-Times, 3/3/08]

Washington Post: Obama-Ayers Link "Is A Tenuous One." The Washington Post reported in a fact check, "But the Obama-Ayers link is a tenuous one. As Newsday pointed out, Clinton has her own, also tenuous, Weatherman connection. Her husband commuted the sentences of a couple of convicted Weather Underground members, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans, shortly before leaving office in January 2001. Which is worse: pardoning a convicted terrorist or accepting a campaign contribution from a former Weatherman who was never convicted?" [Washington Post, 2/18/08]

Woods Fund President Harrington: "This Whole Connection Is A Stretch." The Washington Post reported in a fact check, "Whatever his past, Ayers is now a respected member of the Chicago intelligentsia, and still a member of the Woods Fund Board. The president of the Woods Fund, Deborah Harrington, said he had been selected for the board because of his solid academic credentials and 'passion for social justice.' 'This whole connection is a stretch,' Harrington told me. 'Barack was very well known in Chicago, and a highly respected legislator. It would be difficult to find people round here who never volunteered or contributed money to one of his campaigns.'" [Washington Post, 2/18/08]

Noam Scheiber Of TNR: "I Don't See Evidence Of Any Relationship" Between Obama And Ayers. Noam Scheiber of The New Republic wrote, "Ben says Ayers and Obama were, at best, casual friends. Even that seems to overstate things, though. I don't see evidence of any relationship. The only concrete connection we know of is the meeting, which was attended by a number of local liberals; their contemporaneous membership on the board of a local organization; and a $200-donation by Ayers to one of Obama's state senate campaigns. (Obama also once praised something Ayers had written about the juvenile justice system.) I'm not saying they couldn't have been casual friends; just that there isn't much evidence for that at this point." [The New Republic, 2/22/08]

Birdsell: Obama Links To Ayers Were "Pretty Slender Ties." The New York Sun reported, "'Those are pretty slender ties to a controversial figure,' the dean of Baruch College's School of Public Affairs, David Birdsell, said of Mr. Obama's links to Mr. Ayers." [New York Sun, 2/19/08]

If anything, HRC looks worse for bringing this up, given her husband's pardon of those actually convicted of domestic "terrorism" (i.e., protests and bombings). Facts: Bill's post 1/20/01 sexual peccadilloes have yet to be explored, but you'd better bet they will; the donors list for his foundation will remain private; there is plenty of dirt left to dig up on HRC and the claim that all her baggage has already been gone through is false and naive, just a last-ditch FUD-style attack.

3) Electability

Perhaps a central argument for HRC now is that she can win in the fall and Obama cannot. It has been known for months that Hillary will be a uniter for the GOP, not for her own party. Her negatives are now very high, approval rating at a record low 37% (compared to 49% for Obama) and have been trending this way for a long time. With her consistently high negatives, (55% unfavorability in Rasmussen Reports) in getting GOP crossovers and independents; Republican voters are most comfortable with Obama, and he thus faces no such problem.

Yes, Obama saw some of his numbers go down slightly among certain voting groups, most notably Republicans. But he's still much more competitive with independent voters when matched up against John McCain than Hillary Clinton is. And he still sports a net-positive personal rating of 49-32, which is down only slightly from two weeks ago, when it was 51-28. Again, the biggest shift in those negative numbers were among Republicans.

On one of the most critical questions we've been tracking for a few months, Obama showed resilience. When asked if the three presidential candidates could be successful in uniting the country if they were elected president, 60 percent of all voters believed Obama could be successful at doing this, 58 percent of all voters said McCain could unite the country while only 46 percent of voters said the same about Clinton. All three candidates saw dips on this issue, by the way. In January, 67 percent thought Obama could unite the country; 68 percent thought McCain could do it; and 55 percent said Clinton would be able to pull it off.

The fact that all three dropped equally in the last three months is a sign that the campaign is becoming more ideological and partisan.

In the head-to-head matchups, there weren't huge shifts in the numbers, with Obama and Clinton dead even at 45 percent in the national Democratic primary matchup (a slight increase for Obama from early March). In the general-election matchups, Obama led McCain by 2 points, and McCain led Clinton by 2 points; all margin of error results and nothing to get too excited over.

One thing about these head-to-head matchups: Our pollsters found that for the second poll in a row, more than 20 percent of Clinton and Obama supporters say they would support McCain when he's matched up against the other Democrat. There is clearly some hardening of feelings among some of the most core supporters of both Democrats, though it may be Obama voters, who are more bitter in the long run.

Why? Because among Obama voters, Clinton has a net-negative personal rating (35-43) while Clinton voters have a net-positive view of Obama (50-29). Taken together, this appears to be evidence that Obama, intially, should have the easier time uniting the party than Clinton.

The "electability" card, then, makes more sense with him than with her.

The argument about primary results that she is making is flawed on its face: picking McCain over Obama in the general election does not follow from picking her over Obama in a Dem primary. Let X = Hillary, Y = Obama and Z = McCain. Picking X over Y does not necessitate picking Z over Y. It's an obvious logical fallacy.

Arguments that he is "too liberal" and too far left-of center are also fact-free.

Christopher Hayes explains:

The ideological implosion of conservatism, the failures of the Bush Administration and, perhaps most important, the shifts in public opinion in a leftward direction on war, the economy, civil liberties and civil rights are all coming together at the same time, providing progressives with the rare and historic opportunity to elect a President with a progressive majority and an actual mandate for progressive change.

The question then becomes this: which of the two Democratic candidates is more likely to bring to fruition a new progressive majority? I believe, passionately and deeply, if occasionally waveringly, that it's Barack Obama.

Had you told me a few years ago that the left of the Democratic Party would be split between Obama and Clinton, I'd have dismissed you as crazy: Barack Obama has been a community organizer, a civil rights attorney, a loyal and reliable ally in the State Senate of progressive groups. For the Chicago left, his primary campaign and his subsequent election to the US Senate was a collective rallying cry. If you've read his first book, the truly beautiful, honest and intellectually sophisticated Dreams From My Father, you have an inkling of what young Chicago progressives felt about Obama. He is one of us, and now he's in the Senate. We thought we'd elected our own Paul Wellstone. (Full disclosure: my brother is an organizer on the Obama campaign.)

That's not, alas, how things turned out. Almost immediately Obama--likely with an eye on national office--shaded himself toward the center. His rhetoric was cool, often timid, not the zealous advocacy on behalf of peace, justice and the dispossessed that had characterized Wellstone's tenure. His record places him squarely in the middle of Democratic senators, just slightly to Clinton's left on domestic issues (he voted against the bankruptcy bill, for example). As a presidential candidate, his domestic policy (with some notable exceptions on voting rights and technology policy) has been very close to that of his chief rivals, though sometimes, notably on healthcare, marginally less progressive.

Besides Obama's centrist appeal and high positives with Independents and even Republicans, his election strategy is broad and comprehensive. Kevin Drum on his endorsement of Obama:

The good reasons include (a) the ugliness coming out of the Clinton camp over the past couple of weeks, which has turned me off, (b) a growing sense that Obama's steadiness running his campaign under fire is a good sign of what he'd be like as president, and (c) some of the red state endorsements Obama has gotten recently, which speak well for his potential to produce strong coattails in November.

Although some people would claim that there are no policy differences between the two, it simply ain't so. See this and this. In addition, when it comes to voting in the fall, there are some good reasons to think that anti-war voters will feel less enthused voting for her than Barack. She enabled the war, which gives her little leverage with John McCain. This is why I think Rove &c. want her to win.

Hillary's views on Iraq are documented by Spencer Ackerman and show a complete lack of clarity, just tracking with polling figures. This is the sort of thing that will hurt her badly in the general election: unlike Obama, she can be labeled a "flip-flopper"

...Clinton set herself up to run for president as both a pro-war and an anti-war candidate—depending on the contingencies of the war and the politics of the moment.

Clinton’s statements during October 2002 have received much attention. But what she’s said in the intervening years demonstrates a vertigo-inducing lack of clarity. Her position tracked the political zeitgeist elegantly: cautiously in favor of the war before it started; enthusiastically in favor of it during its first year; overtaken with doubt during 2004; nervously against withdrawal in 2005; cautiously in favor of withdrawal ever since—and all without so much as an acknowledgment of her myriad repositioning. At no point did she challenge the prevailing assumptions behind the war.

This will come back to haunt her.

As Andrew Sullivan made a point of, a significant ideological divide exists between Hillary and Barack: the 60s-era culture wars mentality that conjures up only visions of sexual freedom, gun rights and religious conservatism, while shrouded in the same sort of secrecy and embedded political machine as ever -- versus a new kind of politics focused on transparency and honesty. One candidate pushes a "50+1" strategy while the other attempts to transcend "red state, blue state" mentalities. Even if he is ultimately unsuccessful, his strategy is by far superior to hers, and his prospects for election are clearly better, which is why the GOP wants to match up with HRC.

From strategy to the poll numbers, Obama is the clear winner for electability.

4) Conclusion:

Hillary's three talking points are fairly fact-free and Obama is the clear best pick for POTUS.

Conservative judges

I remember walking from the parking in with a colleague at UF and discussing our voting logic in November 2004. At the time, I am ashamed to admit, I was not yet cognizant of many facts surrounding the Iraq War. I still had a large degree of trust in the President and his handling of our national security. There was no excuse for my ignorance, save ignorance itself -- I was unaware of the growth of internet sites like the ones I now frequent, and got all my news from (gulp) CNN.

If I had been a peruser of blogs back then like Think Progress and TPM and The Carpetbagger Report, I would've known the following already:

01/04 -- Chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay resigns, saying he doesn’t believe Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction ever existed.
05/04 -- Army acknowledges it is investigating at least thirty-five cases of abuse or torture of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
06/04 -- U.S. commission investigating September 11 finds “no credible evidence” linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks; Dick Cheney continues to claim “overwhelming evidence” of a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
08/04 -- For third consecutive year, more Americans in poverty and without health insurance; national poverty rate hits 12.5 percent, 45 million people lack health coverage.
09/04 -- Iraqi Health Ministry statistics show U.S. and allied forces and Iraqi police are killing twice the number of Iraqis—mostly civilians—as the insurgents; officials announce that Health Ministry will no longer provide casualty statistics to reporters.
10/04 -- Chief U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer reports that Iraq had no biological or chemical weapons and no nuclear program before the U.S. invasion; in fact, Duelfer finds no evidence that Iraq had produced any WMDs after 1991.

Talk about an "if-then" situation. If I'd known the above (and more, so much more), I would certainly have had a different political frame of mind at the time. But I did not, and so I was telling my colleague that I thought the Supreme Court should move a little to the right as I felt, at the time, it was perhaps a little too far left-of-center.

Talk about watching what you wish for. Since then, Bush appointed two justices, one of whom -- Samuel Alito -- is so far right-of-center that he makes Hitler look liberal, and even McCain had reservations about him. Alito undersigned the unitary executive legal theory that in effect grants Bush monarchical powers. Although Roberts is not quite so bad (who is?), there were some early signs that he may have been more conservative than moderates believed. And those have proven prescient.

Today's NYT contains an op-ed reviewing McCain's stand on a case that went before the Court in 2006 concerning Lily Ledbetter. The reason this case popped up is that Congress was just voting on a bill to try to fix the problem represented by the Ledbetter case -- unequal pay for women -- a vote that McCain opposed allowing to even occur by voting against cloture (more record GOP filibustering and obstructionism). How did the far right Court rule back then?

The fact that workers generally have no idea what other people are making when they start a job did not concern the court nearly as much as what Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, called “the burden of defending claims arising from employment decisions that are long past.” In other words, pay discrimination is illegal unless it goes on for more than six months.

Ledbetter did not even get her back pay. And Goodyear billed her $3,165 for court-related costs.

I feel so guilty for my complicity in supporting a more conservative SCOTUS now. What kind of screwed up logic states that a systemic corporate policy of discrimination is a crime for only six months? Not that the Court's illogic stops with anti-labor legal rulings. It goes deeper and darker -- to the death penalty, state-church separation and the Bill of Rights for persons accused in crimes. What I now know is the absolutely crucial role of a President in picking justices. A horrid executive leads to horrid justices, which is what we saw in 2005. The next president had better damn well be liberal and nominate liberal justices in order to bring back a semblance of balance to the far-right court as it exists today. I'll be doing my part.

Thoughts on writing

Wow. 800 posts. Two and a half years of blogging (since 11/05). That's a lot of writing.

Lots of quantity, but as for quality, I must suck. I've submitted entries to three contests, but won none (from oldest to newest):

1. FFRF 7/1/06 -- here was the entry
2. AA 1/23/07 -- here was the entry
3. Seed Magazine 6/25/07 -- here was the entry

Perhaps of more importance to me than the contests themselves is the act of writing, even if I'm not sure why I do it. I have tried and failed to stop blogging here, although I was successful at extricating myself from a site where I previously blogged. I've been blogging less since taking my new job, but I still write a lot on the weekends and in the mornings (sometimes saving drafts to be finished later). I've felt one way or another about blog privacy, but for now, it's staying private. I can't afford to lose my job, not with a kid on the way.

In the meanwhile, it seems clear that from my contest failures I'm not a spectacular writer. But it's something I enjoy. And it's something I see myself doing for the rest of my life. I love documenting my thoughts and seeing how I've evolved as a person over the last few years. It's almost like something you can pass down to your kids -- to show them how you grew and changed over the years.

To everyone who does actually read my ramblings from time to time, thanks for letting me share my thoughts and my life with you.

Obama & the counter-enlightenment

I really liked Michael Moore's endorsement of Obama. Money quote:

over the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I've watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name "Farrakhan" out of nowhere, well that's when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the "F" word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama's pastor does -- AND the "church bulletin" once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin!

This sleazy attempt to smear Obama was brilliantly explained the following night by Stephen Colbert. He pointed out that if Obama is supported by Ted Kennedy, who is Catholic, and the Catholic Church is led by a Pope who was in the Hitler Youth, that can mean only one thing: OBAMA LOVES HITLER!

In other news, a new site that I've been following, Secular Philosophy, has a few gems so far, but mostly boring tidbits. Here's a new gem by Massimo Pagliucci:

Ecrasez l’Infame
21, April 2008 , 09:03

by Massimo Pigliucci

The Pope has left New York, and I celebrated the event the other night by going to see Voltaire’s “Candide” (in the fantastic musical adaptation by Leonard Bernstein). Considering that the French Enlightenment philosopher was famous as a harsh critic of organized religion, and that Pope Ratzinger has had the balls of claiming that “the Enlightenment is of Christian origin,” there seemed to be a delicious irony to the weekend.

“When we hear news we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.” (Voltaire)

Indeed, Voltaire -- who was a deist, not an atheist -- got so pissed at religious authorities that he began to sign his letters “Ecrasez l’Infame” (let us crush the infamous), referring to the Church of Rome, currently guided by Ratzinger. As is well known, the latter was until a few years ago the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Inquisition, the very same folks that brought us the burning of Giordano Bruno and the trial of Galileo (though they also inspired the immortal Monty Python skit claiming that “nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition” [nsfl's edit: youtube link here]).

“Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.” (Voltaire)

Ratzinger is a conservative Pope by the standards of the last half century or so, who utters much nonsense, as when he defended the “importance of prayer in the face of the activism and the growing secularism of many Christians engaged in charitable work.” In other words, to believe blindly is much more commendable than actually rolling up one’s sleeves and doing something to improve humanity’s lot.

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” (Voltaire)

Pope Benedict made a big show during his visit in the US of looking contrite about the prolonged scandal centering on sexual abuses perpetrated by members of his clergy. But I wonder how many Americans know that he also wrote a letter to Catholic bishops on the subject, claiming that any Church investigation on this and similar matters is to be considered a pontifical secret, and that anyone revealing any detail of it will be excommunicated (which, if you are a Catholic, means eternal damnation in Hell). Sounds to me like his “Holiness” has something to hide.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” (Voltaire)

Ratzinger has made a major point of his efforts to combat “relativism” and “secularism,” terms that he curiously seems to use almost interchangeably. The Pope has complained of a “dictatorship of relativism,” which is actually an oxymoron, given that relativism is the (bad) idea that all opinions are of equal weight, the very opposite of a dictatorship (the Pope, incidentally, is technically a dictator within his own State).

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” (Voltaire)

In a rare display of philosophical ignorance, Benedict actually attributed modern relativism to Kant, because the latter questioned the absolute powers of reason. But there is a huge difference between acknowledging the limits of human reason and rejecting reason altogether. Indeed, Kant is famous for having attempted to establish morality on reason rather than faith, despite being a rather strict Christian himself. Ratzinger has said idiotic things like “Christianity [is] the religion according to reason,” while at the same time rejecting Kant’s project of bringing back reason in our moral discourse.

I’m just glad that I spent my time enjoying Candide rather than going to pay homage to Ratzinger at Yankee Stadium. Ecrasez l’Infame indeed.

Fantastic. It kills me when xians claim the Enlightenment as their own. Now, the Counter-enlightenment? Sure. As Ed Brayton has written,

This nation was founded by and is based entirely upon the Constitution. If it was really founded on "Christian principles", then it shouldn't be too difficult to point to specific provisions in the Constitution and point to their analogs in the Bible. I doubt you can. I can point to provision after provision in the Constitution and trace them directly to the writings of John Locke and the Baron de Montesquieu, among other Enlightenment thinkers. Separation of powers? Checks and balances? The notion of unalienable rights? Religious freedom? These things are utterly non-existent in the Bible, and were throughout the history of Christian thought as well. They come from Enlightenment philosophy, not from Christianity.

If you can show me how any of these things are "Christian principles" from the Bible, I will stand corrected and apologize. Otherwise, what I would embrace, if I were you, are the concepts and freedoms afforded us in the Constitution, all of which were paid for with the blood of patriots, none "given" as some sort of free gift from God. It is their blood paying for those very things that enable you to worship and vote as you please. The Enlightenment thinkers were almost universally proponents of the freedom of belief and expression, both of which are clearly anti-Christian in nature. God doesn't give you those freedoms.

Sagan once wrote that science was a candle to the darkness of human ignorance. How many candles are burning today, and how much ignorant darkness surround them? Unfortunately, the science & engineering indicators show us that the darkness still outweighs the light.

The bold lies in "Expelled"

The new creationist propaganda piece Expelled is chock full of lies and nonsense.

I have a history with the Richard Sternberg saga, so I wanted to highlight Ed Brayton's recent review of the facts surrounding this affair in Skeptic. This builds on a detailed explanation of the Souder report and its errors from 12/06 he wrote. Also check out the take-down of the other two supposed martyrs for ID: Crocker and Gonzalez.

The long story short is that the premises of Expelled are, to put it generously, false. None of these people suffered consequences for their espousal of ID. Crocker's temporary instructor contract wasn't renewed, but she was pathetic at her job. Gonzalez's productivity plummeted after his post-doc and so he was not offered tenure. Sternberg held his position at the Smithsonian and still has access to a research space there. Lies. Typical creationist lies.

The kicker is that even if they all had been fired, it would not have been wrong, given this simple fact -- academics are judged on the merits of the ideas they produce and defend. In the same sense that someone rejecting the Standard Model would be laughed out of a university physics department, so should biologists rejecting evolution be laughed out of their positions.

Some economics stuff

When it comes to financial and economic analyses, I rely upon more learned minds. Most of them that I read these days leave me fearful.

Both Roubini and Stiglitz were on CNBC yesterday and gave explanations of why this housing recession, consumer debt, financial contagion with a credit crunch, &c., all point to a long and severe recession.

One of the things that has always bothered me is the issue of our national debt. It seems like a mirage because it's almost like it doesn't matter and any consequences from it are always on the horizon. The freefall of our currency's value that would normally be associated with such a huge %(debt : GDP) ratio (about 9:13, or 70%) never seems to manifest, ignoring the recent record weakening of the dollar seen. That's really nothing. If the complete effects of the national debt landed feet-first on the dollar, it would hearken back to the days of Diocletian when you used a coin to cut out a piece of bread its own size, rather than buying multiple loaves per coin.

The only thing I am gleaning from experts is that because China holds so much of our debt, and because they base their currency on ours, this somehow keeps the dollar afloat. If, however, they and other foreign holders of the debt (44% of the total debt is foreign-financed) were to try to cash in the Treasuries they hold, then Krugman's "Wile E. Coyote" moment would occur.

Why hasn't it already? I'll get to that in a moment.

9.3 =! double digits

Hillary won by double digits? Really?

*UPDATE: I just checked the numbers at both sites and the final margins are virtually unchanged: CNN -- 9.29%, PA State Election Authority -- 9.11%*

From CNN, here are 99% (rounded) of the total votes cast in PA's primary:

HRC 54.6504%
Barack 45.3496%

margin: 9.3008%

From PA's state election authority, here are 99.51% of the total votes cast in PA's primary:

HRC 54.5732%
Barack 45.4268%

margin: 9.1464%

In the final count, she'll have, at most, 9.3% more of the vote than Obama, since the remaining precincts are all in Philadelphia, a strongly-Obama area. I have lost all faith in the news media in general. Look at how stupid they look before and after the primary results came in, with their breathless declarations of arbitrary "must win" margins for HRC and how things supposedly will or will not change after the results.

What kills me (and others too) is how Hillary is equivocating that her win in a Democratic primary means that Barack can't win over McCain in the general election. Thankfully, the NYT has a piece explaining the fallacy of this logic today. Here's what John Aravosis said:

On its face you go, wow, he's right. I mean, if Obama can't win Pennsylvania then we're screwed in the fall - that's a lot of electoral votes for McCain. The only problem in Wolfson's logic, and he knows it, is that while Obama is expected to lose Pennsylvania to Hillary in the Democratic primary next Tuesday, that has nothing to do with the results of Obama vs. McCain in the general election. Yes, Hillary's people are lying to you, yet again. Let me walk you through the logic with an example.

1. I have a choice between brownies and cookies for dessert.
2. I choose brownies.

Wolfson is trying to tell me that this means I hate cookies, that I'll never choose cookies in the future, and even if I have a choice between cookies and broccoli for dessert in the fall, I'll choose broccoli then because I didn't choose cookies today.

You see, Wolfson is making a common error that's understandable coming from the Hillary campaign. Most Democrats are not going to help John McCain become president out of spite simply because Hillary didn't win the Democratic nomination. In the real world, Democrats support their party and their nominee - they don't take their toys and go home just because their first choice in the primary didn't win.

Very good point. Just because you like X over Y doesn't mean you won't pick Y over Z. How stupid are people?

*UPDATE: There's an article in the NJ on this issue -- read it here:

Q: Thank you for joining us. Let's talk a little bit about what seems to be "Topic A" among Democrats, and that is Barack Obama's electability. It is the thing that many Democrats are talking about -- journalists as well. Obviously, concerns have been raised, strong concerns, because for the second time in a row in a big state, he's lost with whites, blue-collar voters, Catholics and, of course, those older voters as well. But with respect to the base of the party -- the white blue-collar Catholic in a certain sense -- why shouldn't the Democrats be worried about this?

[David Plouffe, Barack Obama's campaign manager] ...We're happy to have a conversation about electability. I'd start with this, which is, if you look, we've had 46 contests now and Barack Obama has shown real appeal in all segments of the electorate. And I do think if you look at some of the voters that are voting for Senator [Hillary Rodham] Clinton, you know our favorable/unfavorable, our internal traits are very strong, and it would be like suggesting somehow all the Democrats voting for us wouldn't vote for her if she were the nominee. The lion's share of Democrats are going to be supporting the Democratic nominee.

The real question is, who can appeal to independents against a candidate like John McCain whose got unique appeal for a Republican candidate against independents. Who can bring out younger voters? Who can create a favorable turnout dynamic? This doesn't have to be a radical exercise. Let's look at where the general election matchups stand now. In Oregon, in Washington, in New Mexico, in Nevada, in Wisconsin, in Iowa, in Minnesota, in New Hampshire, in Maine, in any number of states that we either have to win or we have to put in play -- Virginia, North Carolina -- we are performing more strongly than Senator Clinton. So I think that there is a lot of navel-gazing about this going on. I think if you look at what the election is likely to be with only a Democratic nominee, a Republican nominee -- McCain adopting all of the Bush policies -- the Democratic Party voters are going to vote in huge numbers for the Democratic nominee. The question is, who can turn out more of them, and who can do best amongst independents and moderate Republicans, and we think undeniably that's Senator Obama.

Q: Well, you've talked here about why he is electable. Obviously, the Clinton campaign and Clinton herself are making strong arguments about why he is not electable, pointing to this base question that I just asked you, pointing to the fact that she's done better in the big states. What kinds of arguments are you going to be making to superdelegates about her electability?

Plouffe: Well, let me just on the big state question -- you know, they point to California, New York, Massachusetts. We are going to carry those states comfortably. Yes, she did win Ohio and Pennsylvania in the primary. If you look at polling matchups of McCain versus Obama and Clinton in Pennsylvania, we perform roughly equal. We've won a lot of big battleground states -- Colorado, Wisconsin, Washington state, Iowa, Virginia. North Carolina, by the way, is going to be a big battleground state in 12 days, so I guess by their definition they need to win there. So this is kind of a ridiculous argument that, you know, they are trying to latch on to.

I mean, I think her electability issues are the following: she's got a high unfavorable rating. It would be the highest unfavorable rating for any presidential nominee in recent history. Fairly or not, the majority of voters don't trust Senator Clinton. Those two points are related, obviously: her unfavorable rating, and the sense that voters do not find her honest or trustworthy. And I do think she has limited appeal with independent voters. A Democratic nominee has to be competitive with independent voters. Ideally you'd win them. John McCain has unique appeal with independent voters. Senator Clinton has difficulty matching up with him with independent voters. She's got less appeal to Republicans, and I also think she's not going to create the kind of turnout that we will in the African-American community and with all voters under 40.

So I think she's got real limited range here, and we think that we will be just as strong as she will be in the core battleground states like Pennsylvania, like Ohio. But the question is, in Iowa, in Wisconsin, in New Mexico, in Nevada -- these are states that have always been very close, that a Democratic nominee has to carry. And we're doing much better than she is against John McCain.

My polycarbonate bottle

So I bought a Trudeau water bottle from Target and today I was wondering if it is made with BPA. Luckily, it doesn't seem to be, given that Trudeau is a Canadian company and they've been looking into BPA for a while now.

I think the fear over BPA is a lot of hype. It's probably a good idea to buy BPA-free baby bottles, because infant development is so sensitive. However, adults should not fear. For one thing, the solubility of BPA is 120-300 mg/L at around room temperature, which basically means that it is nearly insoluble in water and thus migration from the plastic into your drink is going to be next to nonexistent.

I really love my Trudeau brand bottle -- the double wall design is very useful as it avoids all condensation and keeps your hands dry. Also, the drinking straw is wonderful because it sucks to completely unscrew and rescrew the top on a bottle for each drink. It's also proven nearly spill proof. Try one!

Abiogenesis in ice

I love to use our library's resources during break.

About two months ago, I read this great article on abiogenesis in ice in Discover magazine: "Did Life Evolve in Ice?"

Of all the recent things I've read about abiogenesis, this is one of the better ones from a chemist's perspective. The crux is that even though the kinetics of reactions slow down at low T, the entropy is low and concentrations are increased by the formation of pockets within ice crystals:

This is the main argument against Miller’s experiment, and against a cold origin of life in general. But strange things happen when you freeze chemicals in ice. Some reactions slow down, but others actually speed up—especially reactions that involve joining small molecules into larger ones. This seeming paradox is caused by a process called eutectic freezing. As an ice crystal forms, it stays pure: Only molecules of water join the growing crystal, while impurities like salt or cyanide are excluded. These impurities become crowded in microscopic pockets of liquid within the ice, and this crowding causes the molecules to collide more often. Chemically speaking, it transforms a tepid seventh-grade school dance into a raging molecular mosh pit.

“Usually as you cool things, the reaction rates go down,” concluded Leslie Orgel, who studied the origins of life at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, from the 1960s until his death last October. “But with eutectic freezing, the concentrations go up so fast that they more than make up” for the difference.

Cyanide is a good candidate as a precursor molecule in the life-in-a-freezer model for several reasons. First, planetary scientists suspect that cyanide was abundant on early Earth, deposited here by comets or created in the atmosphere by ultraviolet light or by lightning (once the atmosphere became oxygen rich, 2.5 billion years ago, the process would have stopped). Second, although cyanide is lethal to modern animals, it has a convenient tendency to self-assemble into larger molecules. Third, and perhaps most important, no matter how much cyanide rained down, it could become concentrated only in a cold environment—not in warm coastal lagoons—because it evaporates more quickly than water.

New EIA conference & peak oil presentations

Go read this post on a recent EIA conference for its great data on peak oil.

It's a topic I've bloviated about a few times, but it doesn't seem to get old to me.

Obama's comments & the sociology of cultural conservatism

An Obama supporter's take: the infamous comments by Obama meant that people who had been left in dire economic straits throughout both GOP and Democratic administrations turned to an emphasis upon cultural issues to guide them in their voting. Nothing too outrageous when stated thusly, and this type of thinking has been around for a while in the Democratic party: that working-class people have voted against their economic self-interests partly out of frustration with politicians and partly on cultural conservatism.

I think the question of why so many people vote against their own best interests is definitely one worth exploring and arguing about. Are those people convinced that they are economically better off voting the way they do, or do they think cultural conservatism is more important than economic liberalism?

The argument that the GOP has been exploiting cultural conservatism in order to distract the electorate from economic realities is a fairly old one that has found new vigor in recent years. The old "God, guns and gays" joke has a little truth to it, I think. Why do working-class voters vote for economic conservative politicians who act against their own best interests?

Two liberal researchers have looked at the question from opposing vantages and have written on it from an objective perspective -- one who blames "God, guns and gays" and another who doesn't:

Larry Bartels wrote "Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age", the one with the really neat chart on income inequalities under GOP & Dem presidents, and he argues that the working-class doesn't really lean conservative, and that instead, they often don't vote or are outmaneuvered during campaigns. He's convinced Krugman.

Thomas Frank wrote "What's the Matter with Kansas?" and he argues that people are suckers for cultural conservatism. Here's his reply to Larry Bartels.

If what Obama (and Frank) said is in fact true, then it isn't "elitist" to say so. If it isn't, then perhaps it is. Either way, let's assume Obama's an arrogant asshole. This says literally nothing about his ability to run the country, and given the last few years of the "guy you want to have a beer with" and how he's f*#&$d up the country, isn't it worse to have a humble idiot than someone who is arrogant but competent? I'll take an elitist who can solve our problems over a likable idiot any day.

Perhaps the demographics supporting Obama explain his "elitism":

"Obama’s lead over Clinton among white college-educated Democrats (and Democratic leaners) has risen from 7 points to 12 points. Among those with post-graduate degrees, it’s exploded, from an 8 point lead to a 29 point lead. But among white voters with a high school degree or less, his deficit has barely budged, from 33 points to 30 points. As it stands, the educational chasm is stark."

Maybe he's giving up on that demographic. I've argued before that I think the Democrats should do so.

I've ripped on the South before, and its well-known issues:

• poverty
• low minimum wage
  
• poor health care quality (or here)
  
• poor education quality (esp. here in SC)
• horrid work environments
  
• obesity (and here)
• religiosity (or here)
  
• higher STD rates
• highest divorce, teen pregnancy rates (p.10) (or here)
• higher crime
• &c.
  

Now, I found a guy who uses some great sociological data to show correlations between religiosity and other factors:

1. Church attendance and income by state:





2. within-state correlations between rich & poor church attendance





3. affluent voters seem to be more influenced by religion than the working class

So the take-home lesson purports to show that it's the richer right-leaners who make the difference, and that "working-class" people are not as influenced by cultural conservatism as we have been led to believe ... rather, the more upper-middle classes and affluent classes are those most swayed by cultural conservatism. Also, check out Polarized America (H/T: Paul Krugman) for amazing graphs showing the correlation of income inequality to political polarization.

No time for science

Nobel Prize winners comment on how there will be no Science Debate 2008. Hey, how could we have time for that kind of debate, since we spent Wednesday's debate on all the bullshit?

So busy, in fact, with bullshit, that none of the following were mentioned:

The financial crisis
The collapse of housing values in the US and around the world
Afghanistan
Health care
Torture
The declining value of the US Dollar
Education
Trade
Pakistan
Energy
Immigration
The decline of American manufacturing
The Supreme Court
The burgeoning world food crisis.
Global warming
China
The attacks on organized labor and the working class
Terrorism and al Qaeda
Civil liberties and constraints on government surveillance

VT shooting & gun laws

It's hard to believe that it's been a year since the VT shootings. It's harder still to believe that Virginians refused to amend gun statutes to protect citizens from mentally-disturbed persons making gun purchases.

NRA continues to hold dominion over Virginia
Posted January 26th, 2008 at 9:30 am

Guest Post by Morbo

After the Virginia Tech massacre, I wrote a post predicting that the horrific incident would do nothing to change our gun policy. I secretly hoped I’d be proven wrong. Sadly, it looks like I won’t.

In Virginia, lawmakers have rejected modest legislation closing a loophole that allows people to buy weapons at gun shows without undergoing a background check. This should be a no-brainer after what happened, but still the measure failed.

Reported The Washington Post:

Gun-control advocates, including survivors of the April 16 shooting rampage that took the lives of 32 victims at Virginia Tech, poured into a Senate committee meeting to support a bill that would require background checks for all gun-show sales. They then staged a “lie-in,” lying on their backs outside the Capitol to draw attention to gun deaths in Virginia last year.

Some of the survivors offered compelling personal testimony. Colin Goddard, 22, who survived the shootings and is now a senior at the school, cut to the chase when he said: “People tell me I am alive because of God or luck or a bunch of other stuff. I don’t know how much I can accept any of those, but one thing I can’t accept is that it was just criminals being criminals and I was just caught in the wrong situation at the wrong time.”

Amazingly, several gun nuts attended this event with weapons strapped on their hips. That’s right — in Virginia, it is legal to attend a public meeting of government representatives wearing a pistol. One complained that background checks are “onerous” because they can take as long as one day to complete.

At the hearing, some of the surviving students were approached by gun nuts who explained to them that had the students been armed, they could have taken out the shooter, Cho Seung-Hui. These gun nuts are clearly disturbed — yet the legislature listens to them, not the families of those who were killed.

A panel of the Virginia House of Delegates had already voted down closing the loophole. The Senate hearing was an attempt to revive it, but on Wednesday the members of the Courts of Justice Committee voted it down 9-6. All seven Republicans on the committee voted against it, as did two Democrats.

To the gun nuts, “gun control” is synonymous with seizure of weapons. They do this on purpose to frighten people. Thus, the debate becomes whether people can have guns or not instead of what reasonable restrictions we can put in place to make sure the wrong people don’t have access to guns. I don’t want to take away the rifle your uncle Fred uses to hunt deer. I do want to make sure that a deranged person can’t go to a gun show, walk out with an assault rifle and head for the nearest middle school.

If Virginia won’t even pass a baby-step measure like this in the wake of the Virginia Tech killings, then all hope for any sensible gun laws in that state is lost. As I said back in April, we are left to wait until some other deranged person decides to top Cho Seung-Hui’s grim record.

After this was written, we had the NIU shootings. Did he get those guns illegally? Nope.

The graduate student bought two of his four guns at a Champaign, Ill., gun store Saturday — indicating that he had been planning his assault for at least six days, ABC News' Richard Esposito and Pierre Thomas report. The other weapons were purchased from the same store in December and August 2007.

Doesn't it just figure?

That I had to miss this meeting of Gator Freethought. I miss GF. More background here.

Rand & Ingersoll

Where does that odd combo come from?

Krugman mentions that colleges are now being paid to sponsor reading of Rand's work. It's sad if they don't merit academic attention on their own and have to be subsidized. I did enjoy reading Atlas Shrugged and part of The Fountainhead, and I've even written my thoughts on her, but I would agree that they aren't really worthy of a required reading list. The ideas in them, though, are great for philosophy classes & clubs.

Tom Flynn is on Point of Inquiry talking about Ingersoll. I'm a big fan of Ingersoll, and have been since even before reading his bio.

I think Rand & Ingersoll have a lot in common -- they're almost entirely adored only by agnostics and atheists, and they are neither widely known, despite having written and said some very interesting things.

Medved is a moron

Right-wing website Town Hall has a column up by Michael Medved on why Americans should "resist" voting for an atheist as president. It's a load of bullshit from the getgo, and Don Feder's column in USAToday last year was much more articulate. However, given the CNN "faith" special tonight involving the Democratic candidates, it is probably worth looking at:

He begins with a repetition of something we already knew -- that atheists are more distrusted as a minority than any other:

Despite the recent spate of major bestsellers touting the virtues of atheism, polls show consistent, stubborn reluctance on the part of the public to cast their votes for a presidential candidate who denies the existence of God.

Funny that he even thinks we need reminding of that, since he's writing to an almost exclusively conservative audience, all of whom believe that already.

Meanwhile, the members of Congress may hardly qualify as saintly or angelic, but of the 535 men and women in the House and Senate, only one (the shameless radical rabble-rouser Fortney “Pete” Stark of Oakland, California) openly describes himself as an atheist. [link added]

Hyperbole, anyone? First, only a moron would think that Stark is the only nonbeliever in Congress, he's just the only one with the courage and political prospects that enable him to declare it. Not that we haven't heard this sort of stupidity before over Stark. One point to make is that the members of Congress (or the church in general) who have been caught in sexual scandals or what-not are actually more likely to be right-wing "Religious Right" crusaders than lefties like Stark or Sanders or Feingold: Mark Foley, Larry "wide stance" Craig, Bob Allen, Newt Gingrich...read the whole list. And so, if claiming the religious mantle has no real effect on one's behavior as a public official, what is the thrust of Medved's argument?

An atheist may be a good person, a good politician, a good family man (or woman), and even a good patriot, but a publicly proclaimed non-believer as president would, for three reasons, be bad for the country.

Okay, so tell us then, why? Here are his three justifications:

1. Hollowness and Hypocrisy at State Occasions
2. Disconnecting from the People
3. Winning the War on Islamo-Nazism

One of the things that struck me in reading this list was how contradictory his logic was. Before I get into that...

First, can history tell us anything about non-religious presidents? Consider that a few presidents in our history have been about as religious as a toothpick, even if they still believed in God (I'm thinking of the usual suspects -- Jefferson, Lincoln, Grant, &c.). Would you say that the first two had any real discernible impact on their ability to preside over (1) and (2)? Lincoln would certainly not fit into the (2) category easily -- considering that about 1/2 of the nation was "disconnected" from him, but he's considered one of (if not the) greatest presidents. In addition, some of the more overtly religious (like Carter) have turned out to be horrid presidents. So even Medved would have to agree that being able to "connect" with the people of America by having shared views on everything in no way makes one a good Chief Executive or Commander in Chief.

Second, the ability to say, "Let us remember the sacred history of our forefathers and honor them and their achievements," doesn't require shared beliefs with them.

Third, Medved's logic is so convoluted on item three I can't even figure out what he's trying to say:

Our enemies insist that God plays the central role in the current war and that they affirm and defend him, while we reject and ignore him. The proper response to such assertions involves the citation of our religious traditions and commitments, and the credible argument that embrace of modernity, tolerance and democracy need not lead to godless materialism.

WTF? It literally sounds as if Medved thinks that these lunatics have a point and that we ought to sit down at the philosophical table and give them the credibility and standing to engage in such debates with us. It goes on:

In this context, an atheist president conforms to the most hostile anti-America stereotypes of Islamic fanatics and makes it that much harder to appeal to Muslim moderates whose cooperation (or at least neutrality) we very much need. The charge that our battle amounts to a “war against Islam” seems more persuasive when an openly identified non-believer leads our side—after all, President Atheist says he believes in nothing, so it’s easy to assume that he leads a war against belief itself. A conventional adherent of Judeo-Christian faith can, on the other hand, make the case that our fight constitutes of an effort to defend our own way of life, not a war to suppress some alternative – and that way of life includes a specific sort of free-wheeling, open-minded religiosity that has blessed this nation and could also bless the nations of the Middle East.

...again, I'm lost. Is he saying that we would be "aiding the terrorists" by having an atheist president, because then one of their "points" would be confirmed? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but don't they often refer to us as "Crusaders" -- trying to force their culture and religion to conform with ours? And isn't the term "infidel" used to describe non-Muslims, not just nonbelievers? And isn't the "war against radical Islam" what the right-wing wants and isn't it even their own frickin' phrase? This column makes zero sense to me.
--
Now, as far as angry, vocal atheists go, there are some. And as far as the problems that they cause for atheism, there are some. Although the importance of religion in our society must not be underestimated, neither must secular America, especially the trend as it applies towards younger Americans, something I've emphasized before:

The proportion of atheists and agnostics increases from 6% of Elders (ages 61+) and 9% of Boomers (ages 42-60), to 14% of Busters (23-41) and 19% of adult Mosaics (18-22).

Looking at very recent polls, around 18% of Americans do not believe in God. This trend is in line with other recent assessments of the state of atheism, and the disparity in numbers between "atheist" and "82% of people believe in God" confirms that people are still reluctant to self-identify with "the A word" despite their admission that they don't believe in God. In the largest religious self-identification survey ever undertaken, 14% of those surveyed reported "no religion" but only 0.4% explicitly as "atheist". A more recent Baylor study found only 50% of "religious nones" identify as "atheists" -- again note the disparity between non-religious persons and people willing to identify as "atheist" and/or be active in some sort of atheist organization. Another recent poll in The Nation shows that the number of nonbelievers is much higher than commonly recognized - at around 27% not believing in a God (those willing to self-identify as atheists is still much lower).

Regardless of the exact number, the number of atheists visible in politics is next to zero, and that is unlikely to change. Atheists are still distrusted and that prejudice won't change overnight. And that's a lot of why people are reluctant to use the label, even when they admit that they aren't theists. However, the idea that, as America progresses and as the levels of the non-religious and apathetic continue to rise, we won't or can't elect a President with no religion is just wishful thinking on his part. Given the demographics above, it becomes all the more likely as time goes on.

The next time Medved wants to tackle such a topic, he ought to have at least one solid argument behind him.

Intelligent Design: Evolution = Holocaust!

The upcoming creationist propaganda piece, Expelled, has been exposed. Now, SciAm takes a turn, and it isn't pretty:

April 9, 2008
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed--Ben Stein Launches a Science-free Attack on Darwin
In a new documentary film, actor, game show host and financial columnist Ben Stein falls for the pseudoscience of intelligent design
By Michael Shermer

Editor's note: This story is part of a series "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed--Scientific American's Take."

In 1974 I matriculated at Pepperdine University as a born-again Christian who rejected Darwinism and evolutionary theory—not because I knew anything about it (I didn't) but because I thought that in order to believe in God and accept the Bible as true, you had to be a creationist. What I knew about evolution came primarily from creationist literature, so when I finally took a course in evolutionary theory in graduate school I realized that I had been hoodwinked. What I discovered is a massive amount of evidence from multiple sciences—geology, paleontology, biogeography, zoology, botany, comparative anatomy, molecular biology, genetics and embryology—demonstrating that evolution happened.

It was with some irony for me, then, that I saw Ben Stein's antievolution documentary film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, opens with the actor, game show host and speechwriter for Richard Nixon addressing a packed audience of adoring students at Pepperdine University, apparently falling for the same trap I did.

Actually they didn't. The biology professors at Pepperdine assure me that their mostly Christian students fully accept the theory of evolution. So who were these people embracing Stein's screed against science? Extras. According to Lee Kats, associate provost for research and chair of natural science at Pepperdine, "the production company paid for the use of the facility just as all other companies do that film on our campus" but that "the company was nervous that they would not have enough people in the audience so they brought in extras. Members of the audience had to sign in and a staff member reports that no more than two to three Pepperdine students were in attendance. Mr. Stein's lecture on that topic was not an event sponsored by the university." And this is one of the least dishonest parts of the film.

At the Crossroads of Conspiracy

Ben Stein came to my office to interview me about what I was told was a film about "the intersection of science and religion" called Crossroads (yet another deception). I knew something was afoot when his first question to me was on whether or not I think someone should be fired for expressing dissenting views. I pressed Stein for specifics: Who is being fired for what, when and where? In my experience, people are usually fired for reasons having to do with budgetary constraints, incompetence or not fulfilling the terms of a contract. Stein finally asked my opinion on people being fired for endorsing intelligent design. I replied that I know of no instance where such a firing has happened.

This seemingly innocent observation was turned into a filmic confession of ignorance when my on-camera interview abruptly ends there, because when I saw Expelled at a preview screening at the National Religious Broadcasters's convention (tellingly, the film is being targeted primarily to religious and conservative groups), I discovered that the central thesis of the film is a conspiracy theory about the systematic attempt to keep intelligent design creationism out of American classrooms and culture.

Stein's case for conspiracy centers on a journal article written by Stephen Meyer, a senior fellow at the intelligent design think tank Discovery Institute and professor at the theologically conservative Christian Palm Beach Atlantic University. Meyer's article, "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories," was published in the June 2004 Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, the voice of the Biological Society with a circulation of less than 300 people. In other words, from the get-go this was much ado about nothing.

Nevertheless, some members of the organization voiced their displeasure, so the society's governing council released a statement explaining, "Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process. The council, which includes officers, elected councilors and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings." So how did it get published? In the words of journal's managing editor at the time, Richard Sternberg, "it was my prerogative to choose the editor who would work directly on the paper, and as I was best qualified among the editors, I chose myself." And what qualified Sternberg to choose himself? Perhaps it was his position as a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design, which promotes intelligent design, along with being on the editorial board of the Occasional Papers of the Baraminology Study Group, a creationism journal committed to the literal interpretation of Genesis. Or perhaps it was the fact that he is a signatory of the Discovery Institute's "100 Scientists who Doubt Darwinism" statement.

Meyer's article is the first intelligent design paper ever published in a peer-reviewed journal, but it deals less with systematics (or taxonomy, Sternberg's specialty) than it does paleontology, for which many members of the society would have been better qualified than he to peer-review the paper. (In fact, at least three members were experts on the Cambrian invertebrates discussed in Meyer's paper). Meyer claims that the "Cambrian explosion" of complex hard-bodied life forms over 500 million years ago could not have come about through Darwinian gradualism. The fact that geologists call it an "explosion" leads creationists to glom onto the word as a synonym for "sudden creation." After four billion years of an empty Earth, God reached down from the heavens and willed trilobites into existence ex nihilo. In reality, according to paleontologist Donald Prothero, in his 2007 magisterial book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters (Columbia University Press): "The major groups of invertebrate fossils do not all appear suddenly at the base of the Cambrian but are spaced out over strata spanning 80 million years—hardly an instantaneous 'explosion'! Some groups appear tens of millions of years earlier than others. And preceding the Cambrian explosion was a long slow buildup to the first appearance of typical Cambrian shelled invertebrates." If an intelligent designer did create the Cambrian life forms, it took 80 million years of gradual evolution to do it.

Stein, however, is uninterested in paleontology, or any other science for that matter. His focus is on what happened to Sternberg, who is portrayed in the film as a martyr to the cause of free speech. "As a result of publishing the Meyer article," Stein intones in his inimitably droll voice, "Dr. Sternberg found himself the object of a massive campaign that smeared his reputation and came close to destroying his career." According to Sternberg, "after the publication of the Meyer article the climate changed from being chilly to being outright hostile. Shunned, yes, and discredited." As a result, Sternberg filed a claim against the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) for being "targeted for retaliation and harassment" for his religious beliefs. "I was viewed as an intellectual terrorist," he tells Stein. In August 2005 his claim was rejected. According to Jonathan Coddington, his supervisor at the NMNH, Sternberg was not discriminated against, was never dismissed, and in fact was not even a paid employee, but just an unpaid research associate who had completed his three-year term!

Who Speaks for Science?

The rest of the martyrdom stories in Expelled have similar, albeit less menacing explanations, detailed at www.expelledexposed.com, where physical anthropologist Eugenie Scott and her tireless crew at the National Center for Science Education have tracked down the specifics of each case. Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, for example, did not get tenure at Iowa State University in Ames and is portrayed in the film as sacrificed on the alter of tenure denial because of his authorship of a pro–intelligent design book entitled The Privileged Planet (Regnery Publishing, 2004). As Scott told me, "Tenure is based on the evaluation of academic performance at one's current institution for the previous seven years." Although Gonzales was apparently a productive scientist before he moved to Iowa State, Scott says that "while there, his publication record tanked, he brought in only a couple of grants—one of which was from the [John] Templeton Foundation to write The Privileged Planet—didn't have very many graduate students, and those he had never completed their degrees. Lots of people don't get tenure, for the same legitimate reasons that Gonzalez didn't get tenure."

Tenure in any department is serious business, because it means, essentially, employment for life. Tenure decisions for astronomers are based on the number and quality of scientific papers published, the prestige of the journal in which they are published, the number of grants funded (universities are ranked, in part, by the grant-productivity of their faculties), the number of graduate students who completed their program, the amount of telescope time allocated as well as the trends in each of these categories, indicating whether or not the candidate shows potential for continued productivity. In point of fact, according to Gregory Geoffroy, president of Iowa State, "Over the past 10 years, four of the 12 candidates who came up for review in the physics and astronomy department were not granted tenure." Gonzales was one of them, and for good reasons, despite Stein's claim of his "stellar academic record."

For her part, Scott is presented in the film as the cultural filter for determining what is and is not science, begging the rhetorical question: Just who does she think she is anyway? Her response to me was as poignant as it was instructive: "Who is Ben Stein to say what is science and not science? None of us speak for science. Scientists vary all over the map in their religious and philosophical views—for example, Francis Collins [the evangelical Christian and National Human Genome Research Institute director], so no one can speak for science."

From Haeckel to Hitler

Even more disturbing than these distortions is the film's other thesis that Darwinism inexorably leads to atheism, communism, fascism, and could be blamed for the Holocaust. Despite the fact that hundreds of millions of religious believers fully accept the theory of evolution, Stein claims that we are in an ideological war between a scientific natural worldview that leads to Stalin's gulag archipelago and Nazi gas chambers, and a religious supernatural worldview that leads to freedom, justice and the American way. The film's visual motifs leave no doubt in the viewer's emotional brain that Darwinism is leading America into an immoral quagmire. We're going to hell in a Darwinian handbasket. Cleverly edited interview excerpts from scientists are interspersed with various black-and-white clips for guilt by association with: bullies beating up on a 98-pound weakling, Charlton Heston's character in Planet of the Apes being blasted by a water hose, Nikita Khrushchev pounding his fist on a United Nations desk, East Germans captured trying to scale the Berlin Wall, and Nazi crematoria remains and Holocaust victims being bulldozed into mass graves. This propaganda production would make Joseph Goebbels proud.

It is true that the Nazis did occasionally adapt a warped version of social Darwinism proffered by the 19th-century German biologist Ernst Haeckel in a "survival of the fittest races" mode. But this rationale was only in the service of justifying the anti-Semitism that had been inculcated into European culture centuries before. Because Stein is Jewish, he surely knows that the pogroms against his people began ages before Darwin and that the German people were, in Harvard University political scientist Daniel Goldhagen's apt phrase (and book title), "Hitler's willing executioners."

When Stein interviewed me and asked my opinion on the impact of Darwinism on culture, he seemed astonishingly ignorant of the many other ways that Darwinism has been used and abused by political and economic ideologues of all stripes. Because Stein is a well-known economic conservative (and because I had just finished writing my book The Mind of the Market, a chapter of which compares Adam Smith's "invisible hand" with Charles Darwin's natural selection), I pointed out how the captains of industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries justified their beliefs in laissez-faire capitalism through the social Darwinism of "survival of the fittest corporations." And, more recently, I noted that Enron's CEO, Jeffrey Skilling, said his favorite book in Harvard Business School was Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (first published in 1976), a form of Darwinism that Skilling badly misinterpreted. Scientific theorists cannot be held responsible for how their ideas are employed in the service of nonscientific agendas.

Questioning Darwinism

A final leitmotif running through Expelled is inscribed in chalk by Stein in repetitive lines on a classroom blackboard: "Do not question Darwinism." Anyone who thinks that scientists do not question Darwinism has never been to an evolutionary conference. At the World Summit on Evolution held in the Galapagos Islands during June 2005, for example, I witnessed a scientific theory rich in controversy and disputation. Paleontologist William Schopf of the University of California, Los Angeles, for instance, explained that "We know the overall sequence of life's origin, that the origin of life was early, microbial and unicellular, and that an RNA world preceded today's DNA–protein world." He openly admitted, however, "We do not know the precise environments of the early earth in which these events occurred; we do not know the exact chemistry of some of the important chemical reactions that led to life; and we do not have any knowledge of life in a pre-RNA world."

Stanford University biologist Joan Roughgarden declared that Darwin's theory of sexual selection (a specific type of natural selection) is wrong in its claim that females choose mates who are more attractive and well-armed. Calling neo-Darwinians "bullies," the University of Massachusetts Amherst biologist Lynn Margulis pronounced that "neo-Darwinism is dead" and, echoing Darwin, she said, "It was like confessing a murder when I discovered I was not a neo-Darwinist." Why? Because, Margulis explained, "Random changes in DNA alone do not lead to speciation. Symbiogenesis—the appearance of new behaviors, tissues, organs, organ systems, physiologies or species as a result of symbiont interaction—is the major source of evolutionary novelty in eukaryotes: animals, plants and fungi."

Finally, Cornell University evolutionary theorist William Provine (featured in Expelled) presented 11 problems with evolutionary theory, including: "Natural selection does not shape an adaptation or cause a gene to spread over a population or really do anything at all. It is instead the result of specific causes: hereditary changes, developmental causes, ecological causes and demography. Natural selection is the result of these causes, not a cause that is by itself. It is not a mechanism."

Despite this public questioning of Darwinism (and neo-Darwinism), which I reported on in Scientific American, Schopf, Roughgarden, Margulis and Provine have not been persecuted, shunned, fired or even Expelled. Why? Because they are doing science, not religion. It is perfectly okay to question Darwinism (or any other "-ism" in science), as long as there is a way to test your challenge. Intelligent design creationists, by contrast, have no interest in doing science at all. In the words of mathematician and philosopher William Dembski of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a key witness in Stein's prosecution of evolution, from a 2000 speech at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Anaheim, Calif.: "Intelligent design opens the whole possibility of us being created in the image of a benevolent God…. And if there's anything that I think has blocked the growth of Christ as the free reign of the spirit and people accepting the Scripture and Jesus Christ, it is the Darwinian naturalistic view."

When will people learn that Darwinian naturalism has nothing whatsoever to do with religious supernaturalism? By the very definitions of the words it is not possible for supernatural processes to be understood by a method designed strictly for analyzing natural causes. Unless God reaches into our world through natural and detectable means, he remains wholly outside the realm of science.

So, yes Mr. Stein, sometimes walls are bad (Berlin), but other times good walls make good neighbors. Let's build up that wall separating church and state, along with science and religion, and let freedom ring for all people to believe or disbelieve what they will.

Michael Shermer is Publisher of Skeptic (www.skeptic.com) and the author of Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design. His new book is The Mind of the Market.

Evolution = Hitler. Hmmm...sounds familiar to me for some reason.